Budgets/Taxes/Economics

Tennesseans, in a slow trickle, have requested and gotten refunds from the state since the Tennessee Supreme Court struck down the so-called crack tax law in 2009. The state Department of Revenue has refunded $3.7 million to 161 people, but 2,772 people who paid the tax have not gotten any money back. "Most of them just don't know, and the state doesn't have any intention of letting them know, that they're eligible for a full refund," said Columbia attorney John Colley, who is leading a class-action lawsuit that would allow attorneys to identify and notify all people who paid the tax while it was still on the books.

Nicholas W. Payne, the Green Party candidate vying to unseat five-term incumbent Rep. Clark J. Chapin, R-New Milford, believes the state would save both dollars and lives by legalizing drugs. "This election's all about money, jobs and taxes," Payne said. "In New Milford you don't see violence on the streets ... It's the expense of (fighting illegal drugs) I'm going after."

In a forthcoming study for the Cato Institute, Jeffrey A. Miron, senior lecturer on economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow at Cato, and Katherine Waldock, professor of economics at New York University, estimate that legalizing drugs would save the government approximately $41.3 billion annually on expenditures related to the enforcement of prohibition. Just as important, drug legalization would translate into higher tax revenues generated by the sale of these newly-legalized products in the open commercial marketplace. Drug legalization would yield tax revenues of $46.7 billion annually, assuming legal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco, they said.

Oakland is about to become the first city to authorize large scale marijuana cultivation. The move could generate millions of dollars in taxes and create hundreds of new jobs. While the measure has yet to pass, current medical marijuana growers fear the move will drive many of them out of business.